With all of these FoT weapons made, the only thing I'm not happy about is diversity in sounds. I have approx 20 rifles and 20 pistols but only 5 unique sounds for each. But Corpse has a big collection of weapon sounds, and we've been talking about how FO2 uses the Sound ID codes. I figured out how to add at 19 new sound codes.
The Sound ID code is stored in a single byte in weapon protos, the last byte at hex offset 79.
FO2 already uses Sound ID codes 0-9, A-Z, and ! @ # $ _
A valid new code is restricted by several things. First it must be a displayable ASCII character. Second it must not only be displayable it also must typable, the "extended ascii" characters will not work, because the code becomes part of a filename. Third windows file system sees no difference between uppercase and lowercase letters, so we can't use lowercase. Fourth windows does not allow the use of these characters in file names: \ / : * ? " < > |
So I looked at the entire ASCII table, eliminated all codes that are restricted as above, and the ones already used by FO2, and came up with a list of 19 new sound codes that do work. The hex value shown below is what goes in the weapon proto at offset 79. The chr value shown below is what is displayed in the mapper proto editor for Sound ID (and is the 3rd character of the sound file):
hex 20 chr space
hex 25 chr %
hex 26 chr &
hex 27 chr '
hex 28 chr (
hex 29 chr )
hex 2B chr +
hex 2C chr ,
hex 2D chr -
hex 2E chr .
hex 3B chr ;
hex 3D chr =
hex 5B chr [
hex 5D chr ]
hex 5E chr ^
hex 60 chr `
hex 7B chr {
hex 7D chr }
hex 7E chr ~
I have tested all of these codes in actual sound files to make sure they work, and they do: with regsnd (generates lines in sndlist.lst), in the mapper (displays the code only, doesn't allow selecting them), and in game mode (testing the attack, hit, reload, and empty sounds).
To use these new codes, the weapon protos must be edited with a hex editor. The mapper only allows selecting from a menu that is hardcoded with the original set of sound codes used by FO2. Maybe one of the item editors like FIME will allow entering these new codes, I haven't checked that.
Although the mapper won't allow entering (selecting) these new codes, it does display them properly, as the chr value (+ % etc).
These new ASCII characters are the 3rd letter in the file name for weapon sounds. Its really a poor design choice for FO2 because I think we are limited to only 19 more weapon sounds
Corpse helped me find info on some of the naming conventions like the first two letters in the file name:
WA - attack sound
WH - hit sound
WR - reload sound
WO - empty sound (click)
We are proceeding to use these new codes for the weapons add-on, and I'll post more info on the file naming conventions after we've figured out the rest of the puzzle.
The Sound ID code is stored in a single byte in weapon protos, the last byte at hex offset 79.
FO2 already uses Sound ID codes 0-9, A-Z, and ! @ # $ _
A valid new code is restricted by several things. First it must be a displayable ASCII character. Second it must not only be displayable it also must typable, the "extended ascii" characters will not work, because the code becomes part of a filename. Third windows file system sees no difference between uppercase and lowercase letters, so we can't use lowercase. Fourth windows does not allow the use of these characters in file names: \ / : * ? " < > |
So I looked at the entire ASCII table, eliminated all codes that are restricted as above, and the ones already used by FO2, and came up with a list of 19 new sound codes that do work. The hex value shown below is what goes in the weapon proto at offset 79. The chr value shown below is what is displayed in the mapper proto editor for Sound ID (and is the 3rd character of the sound file):
hex 20 chr space
hex 25 chr %
hex 26 chr &
hex 27 chr '
hex 28 chr (
hex 29 chr )
hex 2B chr +
hex 2C chr ,
hex 2D chr -
hex 2E chr .
hex 3B chr ;
hex 3D chr =
hex 5B chr [
hex 5D chr ]
hex 5E chr ^
hex 60 chr `
hex 7B chr {
hex 7D chr }
hex 7E chr ~
I have tested all of these codes in actual sound files to make sure they work, and they do: with regsnd (generates lines in sndlist.lst), in the mapper (displays the code only, doesn't allow selecting them), and in game mode (testing the attack, hit, reload, and empty sounds).
To use these new codes, the weapon protos must be edited with a hex editor. The mapper only allows selecting from a menu that is hardcoded with the original set of sound codes used by FO2. Maybe one of the item editors like FIME will allow entering these new codes, I haven't checked that.
Although the mapper won't allow entering (selecting) these new codes, it does display them properly, as the chr value (+ % etc).
These new ASCII characters are the 3rd letter in the file name for weapon sounds. Its really a poor design choice for FO2 because I think we are limited to only 19 more weapon sounds
Corpse helped me find info on some of the naming conventions like the first two letters in the file name:
WA - attack sound
WH - hit sound
WR - reload sound
WO - empty sound (click)
We are proceeding to use these new codes for the weapons add-on, and I'll post more info on the file naming conventions after we've figured out the rest of the puzzle.
